After the show a group of 4 young ‘ jack-the-lads’, who’d been sitting near the front of the stage saw me at the bar. They bought me a drink (strictly coca cola – I was driving!).

They went on to tell me this was the first burlesque show they’d been too, and how they’d really enjoyed it.

Three of them went off in search of more druken company, and I was left making ‘polite conversation’ with the 4th.

So, I said, will you be back at the next burlesque night?

No, he said quite firmly.

Oh that’s a shame, say I, why not?

Well, how do I put it, he said. I think it should be kept in the bedroom.

I am speechless.

So there you have it pop pickers.  Burlesque.  Keep it in the bedroom.

!

bedroom

not the bedroom

Joseph Merrick suffered from a rare disease which was not actually the elephantiasis that provided his unfortunate nickname. But The Proteus Syndrome Man or even worse, The Neurofibromatosis Man, wouldn’t be a very good movie title, so the misdiagnosis probably worked out for the best.

Merrick was born in England in 1862. When he was a toddler, it quickly became clear that something was terribly wrong when disfiguring tumors sprouted on his face.

Merrick believed he had become deformed because his mother was frightened by an elephant. Even considering the science of the day, this was a ludicrous idea, but then again Merrick didn’t get the chance to receive a high-quality education.

Merrick’s mother died when he was 10. His stepmother couldn’t deal with the child’s escalating deformity and insisted that his father throw him out on the street.

By the age of 12, Merrick was peddling shoe polish on street corners, where he was exposed to the elements as well as the taunts, bullying and general persecution of his fellow urchins. Later he became a ward of the state, forced to live and work in a welfare sweatshop.

Merrick’s face and body were covered with massive lumpy growths, hard tumors made of bone.  A lackadaisical attempt to cut away some of the excess growth failed, and Merrick’s deformity grew.

Everywhere he went, crowds gathered around to gape at his deformities, without paying so much as a penny. Putting two and two together, Merrick decided to pursue the most obvious career choice that lay before him — sideshow freak. If he was going to be a spectacle, he could at least profit from the process.

Despite popular myths about the Elephant Man, Merrick wrote in a short autobiography that his time as a sideshow freak wasn’t particularly sordid or hurtful. Real life was hurtful. In the sideshow, Merrick said, he was treated only with the “greatest kindness.”

Although his life had been filled with clamor, his death came quietly. Merrick died in bed at the age of 27. Through his life, Merrick had slept in an upright position because of his deformities, but on the night of April 11, 1890, he lay down on his back in bed and apparently asphyxiated from the weight of his chest.

Last week Mason and I came home from one shin-dig or another and as we turned the corner into our ‘Close’ we came face to face with a fox!  We both stood quite still and said to each other ‘fox’, we’re very bright you know.  When I say close, I mean CLOSE, (for a fox); I’d say about 6 foot away, staring right at us!

It was our first encounter with a fox in the city, E14 is still the city I don’t care what you say.  But none the less we watched this litttle fox and he watched us, until a car came speeding up the road making the fox jump and it ran away.  It was quite exciting to come face to face with wild nature in our little corner of the suburb…

The Modern English “fox” is Old English, and comes from the Proto-Germanic word fukh – compare German Fuchs, Gothic fauho, Old Norse foa and Dutch vos. It corresponds to the Proto-Indo-European word puk- meaning “tail of it” (compare Sanskrit puccha, also “tail”). The bushy tail is also the source of the word for fox in Welsh: llwynog, from llwyn, “bush, grove”. Lithuanian: uodegis, from uodega, “tail”, Portuguese: raposa, from rabo, “tail” and Ojibwa: waagosh, from waa, which refers to the up and down “bounce” or flickering of an animal or it’s tail.

I made mittens, lots of mittens….I knitted a football outfit in my dad’s local football team colours, and I knitted more mittens.  I tried to knit a cardigan but I got really bored.  I enjoyed the knitting thing, I found it escapism from the day job, the boring Sunday afternoons watching Mason do his homework; I found it quite satisfying.

But bored of baby clothes, I went looking for something a little more, dare I say it, exciting?

I found a world of knitted children’s toys!  I knitted a giant clown with a toothbrush and toothpaste (we call him Pogo); an old fashioned gollly doll; a little santa complete with sack of toys; a little boy in a kilt (I’m Scottish you see…); and most recently for my niece a rag doll…

I’ve moved on now to knitting Ugs; I also bought on ebay some vintage Sindy Doll knitting patterns and about to embark on a journey to knit a Wonder Woman outfit for Sindy.

I ask you, is there a better way to spend a weekend???

Miss Ragity Rose in her pj’s

Monday 16th Feb, Baby Blue Eyes Promotions @ Proud, Camden

Monday 2nd March, Flay&DeVille’s Circus of Marvels, Madame JoJo’s

Saturday 14th March, Vicky Butterfly presents @ Proud, Camden

Sunday 29th March, Dolly Re-Mixture, Hitchen

About a month ago I bought some of those see through plastic shoes boxes, and I was getting fed up having to pull out 4 or more boxes to find the ones I was after.  So while transferring shoes from cardboard boxes to see though plastic boxes, I found myself saying, “oh, I forgot about these!”, and “when did I buy these?”  Oops.

It’s true that if I find a shoe I like I buy it in both colours.  By both, I mean red and black, ahem.

There are the shoes which came in individual cotton bags, for their own protection; the collection of zebra print shoes with 3 different heel heights; the 4 pairs of almost identical black lace-up high heels; there are the red suede shoes from Harrods I won’t wear out in case anyone spills drink on them; the red patent shoes from New York which made my in-laws gasp at the price; and the shoes from New Look which I can’t walk in, but look great in photo’s.  Oops.

Oh, and then there’s the 6 pairs of converse hi-tops; the birkenstocks for summer; the shoes I wear for my routines, yup that adds another 6 pairs, the 2 pairs of wellingtons boots (knee high red ones and ankle high black ones with tigers on them, the shoes I keep at work for days when I turn up in my boots, and finally 3 pairs of slippers.

I have an admission to make.  I love shoes!

Why? Quite simply this… 

The White Lies’ debut album, To Lose My Life is the best of nostalgia in a bleak old world.  Sounding like, Echo & the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, maybe even a hint of some ‘new’ bands like Editors and Interpol thrown in.  I loved it.  A real toe-tapper, that made be want to come home and listen to all my 7″ records again.

I fully expect them to be at Glastonbury this year; I expect this to be in the NME’s 2009 albums of the year run down; I expect their second album will disappoint and finally, I expect I’ll listen to it whenever the idea of going to work makes me sad.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy new music and am still actively buying cd’s not downloading everything from i-tunes!  We still get NME delivered and even watch a bit of MTV2 every now and then.  But there is something reassuring, in such a horrible time, about listening to music that captures but manages to bring up to date the music of my youth.

Right, off to listen to Jonny Cash….

It seems that I’ve had a life long interest in the subject.

After a visit to the National Museum of Native American Indian in NYC last year, the bookshop provided the best of the best books on the subject.  After hmm-ing and ha-ing over which book to buy, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown was the book I felt would satisfy my interest.  And the one recommended by the shop assistant, who’d read it at school.

It goes without saying that history is written by the winners.  But this book  shares the story of some of the losers. 

This book shows the Native Americans as virtuous, hardworking and trusting.  It’s an emotive, heartbreaking and often brutal account of the late 19th century.  The story of the frontier; the tale of humanity and sadness.

I appreciate that the book isn’t perfect; neither is the red or white man.  But this book does confirm that the Native Americans got a bum deal.  Like every race ‘new’ to the white man, Christianity without a doubt played a part in this genocide of a nation and death of a way of life; as did greed and a general ignorance of the lifestyle the Natives had.  A lifestyle that had worked for generations.

Next time you watch John Wayne pop off a few Sioux’s you might just find yourself cheering for the underdog!